Bigmouth McBride turned us off SCO, says investor

BayStar boss speaks

Common Topics

The CEO of Marin County investment firm BayStar Capital has given the first public reasons for wanting to withdraw his investment from The SCO Group.

"The public statements from Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive, were too frequent and too grand for BayStar's liking," we learn indirectly from the New York Times. BayStar invested $20m in The SCO Group, which is suing IBM and Novell and two major corporate Linux customers.

McBride has framed the headline-grabbing terms, stating that capitalism itself is under threat from the GPL. BayStar would have preferred SCO executives to take a lower profile, and concentrate on winning the case. It certainly doesn't imply that BayStar thinks SCO is a lost cause. An equally valuable quote from a BayStar spokesperson to CNET confirms that BayStar thinks that SCO's IP is its strongest card.

"We believe it is diverting resources from going where they would have the most value - the intellectual property process," says Baystar's Bob McGrath.

But the markets don't seem to agree. SCO shares have lost almost a third of their value since the news emerged last week. This is the first time in its six-year history that BayStar has ever asked for its money back. ®